Chương 12: Three Hundred Players Enter a New World

The man outside said Chen Li had sent him. But she had never told Chen Li where she lived. Gu Zhiwei didn't open the door. She stepped back half a pace and sent a message to their six-person group chat. Gu Zhiwei: Uncle Chen, did you send someone to find me? The man outside seemed patient. He wore a gray shirt, and he kept both hands where she could see them. The reply came fast. Chen Li: It's me. Come with Xiao Lin, we'll talk in person. The young man held out a business card, polite and professional.

"Ms. Gu, Mr. Chen would like to meet with you. If it's inconvenient, I can also have him video-call you directly." The card was stamped in silver foil, and at the top was the logo of Lightcone International Group. Gu Zhiwei had seen that logo before. Lightcone International's hotels, malls, and restaurant chains were everywhere in Shanghai's commercial districts. The tech company she worked for had been acquired outright by an investment firm last year. A colleague in finance had mentioned it at the time.

Peel back a few more layers of that firm and you'd find Lightcone International holding the controlling stake. So the middle-aged man in the navy polo shirt, the one Wang Pu called Uncle Chen every other sentence, was, in real life, only a few hundred million yuan richer than he'd let on. Half an hour later, Gu Zhiwei met Chen Li at a teahouse downtown, a quiet pocket carved out of the noise. He'd come without an assistant. A pot of green tea sat on the table, already gone cold.

"Showing up at your door uninvited… I hope I didn't frighten you." Chen Li pushed a folder across to her.

"Fifteen days is short, and we're scattered across different countries. There's a limit to what we can do. Take a look at this plan. If you think it works, you can leave right away. I'll have someone handle things at your company." Inside were temporary housing arrangements, a training schedule, an insurance agreement, and a bank account with an amount high enough to make you count the zeros twice. Gu Zhiwei asked, curious, "So you noticed me in that white space because of my badge?"

"You came across as very calm." Chen Li laughed lightly and took a sip of the cold tea.

"And yes, I noticed your badge. Your company had just been acquired. I saw it in an internal report."

"You didn't bring any of that up back there."

"In a place like that, there's nothing to gain from revealing your real identity." He said it evenly. He offered help without asking her to explain her skills, without pressing about the Sacred Spirit Vine Staff, and without once leaning on the fact that he was, technically, her boss.

"I own a hot spring resort in Hongshan. Part of it's closed for the off-season. There's a gym, medical facilities, and a licensed shooting range. I've brought in coaches for combatives, conditioning, and marksmanship. Room, board, and training costs are on me." Gu Zhiwei paged through the schedule. Ten hours a day. Professionally structured, with actual recovery time built in.

"Why help me this much?" Chen Li was quiet for a moment, the pad of his thumb pressing lightly on the rim of his cup.

"First mission, twenty people. But you saw it too. Over a hundred thousand people online on the Forum. How many next time? How long does the system intend to keep us doing this? Nobody knows." The faint fragrance of the spent tea hung in the air.

"Stronger teammates mean I live longer." Then he looked up at her, smiling.

"And your performance in the Cloud Sea world is worth the investment." Refreshingly blunt. After the Cloud Sea world, after fighting alongside them, Gu Zhiwei trusted the people in that group considerably more than anyone else. Chen Li had also sent people to contact Wang Pu and Su Ye. As for Matt and Maria, he'd asked for their locations by Forum DM, and given practical issues like visas, he was arranging reliable training resources locally.

"I've got people digging into the system too," Chen Li added.

"Whatever it is, it has to be beyond any technology that currently exists on Earth. If anything turns up, I'll share it with all of you." Gu Zhiwei closed the folder.

"All right."

Three days later, Wang Pu lay facedown on the mats of the training hall, questioning his existence. The combatives coach tapped his back with a focus pad.

"Up."

"Coach, I think I'm already dead."

"Perfect. Dead men don't need rest." The training hall was built partway up the mountain; outside the windows stood a pine forest washed emerald by autumn rain. Sweat and disinfectant mingled in the air, and the rubber mats squeaked underfoot. Su Ye sat against the wall rewrapping her wrist guards, her fingers blistered raw. Her baseline strength was low. For the first two days she couldn't even hold a proper guard for long. By the third, she could manage simple evasions. Wang Pu was still groaning on the floor.

"Ye, you've changed. You used to have sympathy for the weak." Su Ye looked down at him, breathing hard.

"You know you're trash and you're still lying there?"

"... Sis Gu, save me." Gu Zhiwei was working on the heavy bag. She paused.

"Matt says he's going to field-test your progress the second we're in the next world. I'd keep training if I were you." Wang Pu rolled over and stared at the ceiling.

"This team has no humanity left." He said it, and then he got up anyway and threw himself back into it. Strength 20 in the real world gave Gu Zhiwei explosive power beyond any ordinary person. Her weak points were technique and actual fighting experience. She drilled escapes, ground defense, and counters in confined space over and over. Her forearms went hot where the blocking pads scraped them; thin splits opened on her hands, soaked in salt-bitter sweat, stinging. And the sting only made her sharper.

The shooting coach started by teaching her to field-strip a training weapon, then corrected her stance and breathing. Her archery experience didn't help much here. But Spirit 26 wasn't just for show, and her accuracy startled even the coach. By day six she could move, stop, and reliably put rounds into the torso of a silhouette.

"Accuracy's good enough. Speed's still lacking." The shooting coach pulled down the target paper.

"In a real fight, nobody waits for you to fix your breathing." This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Again." Gu Zhiwei swapped in a fresh magazine. Fifteen days couldn't turn them into commandos. But every one of them was far stronger than when they'd first fallen into the Cloud Sea. On the evening of the fourteenth day, the six of them went over everything one last time in the group chat. Maria sent over the first-aid notes she'd compiled. Matt put together countermeasures for several common melee weapons. Chen Li prepared sealed medicine, lightweight body armor, and outdoor gear for everyone.

Nobody knew whether any of it would travel with them, but it was better to have it. Wang Pu: My grandma thinks I'm at a private fitness boot camp in the mountains. She saw my face on video just now, said I'd slimmed down, and said Uncle Chen's place really works. Su Ye: You didn't tell her? Wang Pu: How exactly?

"Ah-ma, in two days your grandson might go hand-to-hand with Godzilla"? She'd catch an overnight bus up here to drag me home. Chen Li: Get to bed early tonight. The exact deployment time may vary slightly. Keep your gear on you. Mountain wind moved through the pine tops outside, and rain ticked against the glass in a fine, endless stitching. Gu Zhiwei tossed and turned and didn't fall asleep until the small hours. At nine in the morning on the fifteenth day, the six-person group chat stopped refreshing all at once.

The mechanical female voice came without warning. 【Deployment sequence initiated. 】 White light descended from above the training hall. Gu Zhiwei only had time to see Wang Pu spring up out of his chair and Su Ye reach for her pack before the dark swallowed her sight. The weightlessness lasted barely an instant. When she opened her eyes again, the first thing she registered was a faint scent of aloeswood.

Beneath her was a carved hardwood bed, the brocade quilt cool, and beyond the paper window, the sky held the blue-gray of the hour before dawn. Her training clothes were gone, replaced by a moon-white inner robe. Her hair lay loose over her shoulders, and a pair of jade bracelets circled her wrists. Unfamiliar memories crashed into her mind. Great Yong. The capital. The residence of the Director of the Bureau of Astronomy. Her name was still Gu Zhiwei.

She was the youngest daughter of Gu Yaozhi, Director of the Bureau of Astronomy, and had studied calendrical calculations and the constellations under her father and brother from an early age. The transparent panel unfolded in the dim inner room. 【World Sequence Two: load complete. 】 【Deployment count this round: 300. 】 【Team system unlocked. Participants may freely create or join teams. If any single party completes the main quest, all surviving players may return.

】 【The first party to complete the quest: all members will receive an additional first-clear reward. 】 【Time limit: five years. 】 【Main quest: In the year of Chongjing Fifteen[1], a baleful star descends upon the world of Great Yong. Objective: find the baleful star. 】 Five years. Three hundred people. The headcount suddenly grew to more than ten times what it was last time, and teams could compete with each other. The system apparently had no intention of interfering with competition between players.

Or even in players hurting one another. So this was it? Graduate from Newbie Village, and PvP officially unlocks? The setting looked more like ancient China, though no Great Yong dynasty had ever been recorded in any history. The Bureau of Astronomy, on the other hand, had genuinely existed in the Tang. It was the office charged with maintaining the calendar and observing celestial phenomena for the imperial court. Not bad luck at all.

When it came to finding a baleful star, who could be more qualified than the government's own astronomers? Gu Zhiwei got up barefoot and pulled on a robe. Cold crept in through the soles of her feet while memories and stray images still churned through her mind. It was the fifteenth year of Chongjing in Great Yong. Half a month earlier, her father, Gu Yaozhi, had been observing the night sky when he saw Mars encroach upon the Heart constellation and a guest star appear within the Purple Forbidden Enclosure.

He had pounded on the palace gates that same night, entered the hall, and prostrated himself.

"Tonight, a baleful comet entered the Purple Forbidden Enclosure and drew dangerously close to the Emperor's Seat. I fear it foretells a grave threat to the throne and the dynasty. I beg Your Majesty to reflect upon your conduct, temper the severity of the law, show mercy to the people, and fast and pray at the ancestral temple, that Heaven's displeasure may yet be turned aside. [2]" But the Yong Emperor issued no order to cultivate virtue and avert disaster.

He ordered only that Gu Yaozhi investigate everyone whose birth hour and natal direction corresponded to the baleful star. In a single night the prisons of the capital region filled. The diviners seized the opportunity to level accusations, while court officials used it to destroy their rivals. Countless lives were taken in the name of rooting out the baleful star. Gu Yaozhi had gone to the execution grounds. When he came back, he sat alone in his study until midnight.

As the night thinned toward dawn, he gathered his star charts into his arms and climbed to the terrace of the imperial observatory. The memory was cut off there. Something was wrong. Gu Zhiwei felt it, and shoved the door open.

"Someone, saddle a horse!" Cold air struck her face in the courtyard. Under the eaves the bronze bell swung in the dawn wind, its clear ringing breaking apart in the mist. A few servants hunched along the covered walkway looked up, startled by her shout, and one of them hurried over.

"Miss, it's barely dawn. Where are you going?"

"The imperial observatory. Hurry." She threw a cloak over her shoulders and started out before her shoes were properly on; a maid ran after her to tie the fastening tight. The man was almost certainly a key figure in this mission. And he was this identity's father. Whether by emotion or logic, she had to go check on him. The terrace was not nearby. It stood within the Bureau of Astronomy in the north of the city, clear across half the capital. A capital that had yet to wake.

When the horse was brought to the gate, it blew clouds of white from its nostrils. Gu Zhiwei found the stirrup and swung up, silently thanking Uncle Chen again for the riding lessons. She clamped her legs against its flanks, and the hooves shattered the thin frost on the long street as they tore away. The morning drums hadn't sounded yet. The ward gates stood open only a narrow crack, enough for officials to pass. She flashed the waist token of the Director's residence and the sentries scrambled aside.

The cold wind cut straight into her face until her eyes ached. Faster. And faster. She didn't know what she was racing against, but her gut told her the man might be about to do something irreversible. The blue-black roofline of the Bureau of Astronomy finally emerged through the mist. Gu Zhiwei hauled the horse to a stop, the coarse reins burning the web of her hand. She tossed them to the guard who came running and went straight through the gate. Two courtyards in, her brother Gu Zhao was standing there.

He wore dark blue everyday robes, a thin layer of white frost resting on his shoulders. He'd clearly been waiting a while. Hearing footsteps, he turned, weariness sitting under his eyes.

"Zhiwei? What are you doing here?" Gu Zhiwei went past him, looking at the shut courtyard door.

"Where's Father?" Gu Zhao glanced at the door, which still hadn't stirred.

"The astronomer on duty said he went in at the start of the Mao hour and hasn't come out. Father doesn't like to be disturbed when he's working through the star charts, so I've been waiting." The start of the Mao hour. If this world's cultural framework matched ancient China, that meant around five in the morning. Gu Zhiwei looked up at the sky, already full daylight. It sat badly with her. She pushed at the door and found it barred from the inside. Gu Zhao stared at her, bewildered.

"Zhiwei?" There was no time to explain. She stepped back half a pace and drove her heel into the door. The panels slammed inward, and the towering stone steps of the observatory rose before her. Gu Zhiwei ran in. [1]. Chongjing Fifteen: the fifteenth year of the Chongjing era. Great Yong is the name of the dynasty, while Chongjing is an era name used to date the years of a ruler's reign. A dynasty can span many emperors and many era names; when a new era name is adopted, the year count begins again from Year One.

[2]. In ancient China, natural disasters and unusual celestial events, such as eclipses and comets, were often interpreted as signs that the ruler had failed in his moral duties. Conscientious officials responsible for observing celestial phenomena and monitoring weather patterns were expected to report such changes to the emperor immediately and urge him to respond by reducing taxes, providing disaster relief, and reforming the administration.

Less conscientious ones, presumably, told the emperor whatever he preferred to hear, or could always discover that Heaven, by remarkable coincidence, agreed with the emperor.